had befallen to her, but she said she did not want plenty of meat, for that her mother came and fed her with milk and bread several times a day, and sung her to sleep at night. Her skin had acquired a bluish cast, which gradually wore off in the course of a few weeks. Her name was Jane Brown; she lived to a very advanced age, and was known to many still alive. Every circumstance of this story is truth, if the father's report of the suddenness of her disappearance may be relied on.

Another circumstance, though it happened still later, is not less remarkable. A shepherd of Tushilaw, in the parish of Ettrick, whose name was Walter Dalgleish, went out to the heights of that farm one Sabbath morning to herd the young sheep of his son and let him go to church. He took his own dinner along with him, and his son's breakfast. When the sermon was over, the lad went straight home, and did not return to his father. Night came, but nothing of the old shepherd appeared. When it grew very late his dog came home-seemed terrified, and refused to take any meat. The family were ill at ease during the night, especially as they had never known his dog leave him before; and early next morning the lad arose and went to the height to look after his father and his flock. He found his sheep all scattered, and his father's dinner unbroken, lying on the same spot where they had parted the day before. At the distance of twenty yards from the spot the plaid which the old man wore was lying as if it had been flung from him, and a little farther on, in the same direction, his bonnet was found, but nothing of himself. The country people, as on all such occasions, rose in great numbers and searched for him many days. My father and several old men still alive were of the party. He could not be found or heard of, neither dead nor alive, and at length they gave up all thoughts of ever seeing him more. On the twentieth day after his disappearance, a shepherd's wife, at a place called Berry bush, came in as the family were sitting down to dinner and said that if it were possible to believe that Walter Dalgleish was still in existence, she would say yonder was he coming down the hill. They all ran out to watch the phenomenon, and as the person approached nigher they perceived that it was actually he, walking without his plaid and his bonnet. The place where he was first descried is not a mile

distant from that where he was last seen, and there is neither brake, bog, nor bush. When he came into the house he shook hands with them all -asked for his family, and spoke as if he had been absent for years, and as if convinced something had befallen them. As they perceived something singular in his looks and manner, they unfortunately forbore asking him any questions

at first, but desired him to sit and share their dinner. This he readily complied with, and began to sup some broth with seeming eagerness. He had only taken one or two spoonfuls when he suddenly stopped, a kind of rattling sound was heard in his breast, and he sank back in a faint. They put him to bed, and from that time forth he never spoke another word that any person could make sense of. He was removed to his own home, where he lingered a few weeks and died. What befell him remains to this day a mystery, and for ever must.-Hogg's Poems.

Page 841.-CHRISTABEL. Coleridge's friend, Mr. Gilman, with whom he spent much of the latter part of his life, and who began his biography, tells us that "the following relation was to have occupied a third and fourth canto, and to have closed the tale: 'Over the mountains the Bard, as directed by Sir Leoline, hastes with his disciple, but in consequence of one of those inundations supposed to be common to this country, the spot only where the castle once stood is discovered, the edifice being washed away. He determines to return. Geraldine, being acquainted with all that is passing, like the Weird Sisters in Macbeth, vanishes. Reappearing, however, she waits the return of the Bard, exciting, in the mean time, by her wily arts, all the anger she could rouse in the baron's breast, as well as that jealousy of which he is described to have been susceptible. The old Bard and the youth at length arrive, and therefore she can no longer personate the character of Geraldine, the daughter of Lord Roland de Vaux, but changes her appearance to that of the accepted, though absent, lover of Christabel. Next ensues a courtship most distressing to Christabel, who feelsshe knows not why-great disgust for her oncefavored knight. This coldness is very painful to the baron, who has no more conception than herself of the supernatural transformation. She at last yields to her father's entreaties, and consents to approach the altar with this hated suitor. The real lover, returning, enters at this moment, and produces the ring which she had once given him in sign of her betrothment. Thus defeated, the supernatural being, Geraldine, disappears. As predicted, the castle-bell tolls, the mother's voice is heard, and, to the exceeding great joy of the parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after which follow a reconciliation and explanation between the father and daughter.'"-Morley's Shorter Poems.

Page 848.-KUBLA KHAN.-In the summer of the year 1797 the author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight in

disposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effect of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage: "Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto, and thus ten miles of fertile ground were enclosed with a wall." The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines, if that, indeed, can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but alas! without the after-restoration of the latter.-Coleridge's Poems.

Page 851.-THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN.— The story of the Pied Piper-that first by his pipe gathered together all the rats and mice and drowned them in the river, and afterward, being defrauded of his reward, which the town promised him if he could deliver them from the plague of those vermin, took his opportunity and by the same pipe made the children of the town follow him, and leading them into a hill that opened, buried them there all alive-has so evident proof of it in the town of Hammel where it was done, that it ought not at all to be discredited. For the fact is very religiously kept among their ancient records, painted out also in their church-windows, and is an epoch joined with the year of our Lord in their bills and indentures and other law instruments. Henry Moore's Philosophy.

Page 855.-THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. Wordsworth has given the following account of the origin of "The Ancient Mariner." "It arose," he says, "out of the want of five pounds which Coleridge and I needed to make a tour together in Devonshire. We agreed to write jointly a poem, the subject of which Coleridge took from a dream, which a friend of his had once dreamt, concerning a person suffering under

a dire curse from the commission of some crime. I supplied the crime, the shooting of the albatross, from an incident I had met with in one of Shelvocke's voyages. We tried the poem con

jointly for a day or two, but we pulled different ways, and only a few lines of it are mine."Frederick Saunders's Festival of Song.

Page 878.-THE ABBOT M'KINNON.-To describe

the astonishing scenes to which this romantic tale

relates, Icolmkill and Staffa, would only be multiplying pages to no purpose. By the Temple of the Ocean is meant the Isle of Staffa, and by its chancel the Cave of Fingal.

St. Columba placed the nuns in an island at a little distance from Iona, where he would not suffer either a cow or a woman; "for where there are cows," said he, "there must be women; and where there are women, there must be mischief.” -Hogg's Poems.

Page 892.-THE LAIRD O' COCKPEN.-Miss Ferrier, who wrote Marriage Destiny, etc., added the last two verses.

Page 899.-BAUCIS AND PHILEMON.-The original tale here playfully modernized is in the Eighth Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Jove and Mercury are the originals of the two brother hermits. Finding hospitality only in the thatched cottage of the poor old couple, Bancis and Philemon, the gods after their entertainment took the old couple to the top of the hill, whence they saw the houses and lands of their uncharitable neighbors all swallowed in a lake. Only their little home remained, which expanded to a temple. In this they served as the priests of Jove until they were changed into companion trees, hung over with fresh garlands by their worshippers.-Morley's Shorter Poems

Page 914.-THE VICAR OF BRAY.-The Vicar of Bray, in Berkshire, was a Papist under the reign of Henry VIII., and a Protestant under Edward VI.; he was a Papist again under Mary, and once more became a Protestant in the reign of Elizabeth. When this scandal to the gown was reproached for his versatility of religious creeds, and taxed for being a turncoat and an inconstant changeling, as Fuller expresses it, he replied, "Not so, neither; for if I changed my religion, I am sure I kept true to my principle; which is, to live and die the Vicar of Bray."

This vivacious and reverend hero has given birth to a proverb peculiar to this county: "The Vicar of Bray will be Vicar of Bray still." But how has it happened that this vicar should be so notorious, and one in much higher rank, acting the same part, should have escaped notice? Dr. Kitchen, Bishop of Llandaff, from an idle abbot under Henry VIII. was made a busy bishop;

Protestant under Edward, he returned to his old master under Mary; and at last took the oath of supremacy under Elizabeth, and finished as a Parliament Protestant. A pun spread the odium of his name, for they said that he had always loved the Kitchen better than the Church.-Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature.

Page 922.-WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS.-This satire was written to ridicule the habit of comparatively obscure personages writing long letters to the newspapers supporting this or that candidate. The General C. mentioned in the poem is Gen. Caleb Cushing, afterward Attorney-General of the United States. During his absence at the head of his troops in the Mexican war he was nominated for Governor of Massachusetts, but was not elected.

Page 929.-THE DIVERTING HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN. Mr. Beyer, an eminent linen-draper at the end of Paternoster Row, where it adjoins to Cheapside-who died on the 11th of May, 1791, at the ripe age of ninety-eight-is reported upon tolerable authority to have undergone in his earlier days the adventure which Cowper has depicted in his ballad of "John Gilpin." It appears from Southey's life of the poet that, among the efforts which Lady Austen from time to time made to dispel the melancholy of Cowper, was her recital of a story told to her in her childhood of an attempted but unlucky pleasure-party of a London linen-draper, ending in his being carried past his point both in going and returning, and finally brought home by his contrarious beast, without ever having come in contact with his longing family at Edmonton. Cowper is said to have been extremely amused by the story, and kept awake by it the great part of the ensuing night, during which he probably laid the foundations of his ballad embodying the incidents. This was in October, 1782.

Southey's account of the origin of the ballad may be consistent with truth; but any one who candidly reads the marriage adventure of Commodore Trunnion, in Peregrine Pickle, will be forced to own that what is effective in the narration previously existed there.-Chambers's Book of Days.

Page 985.-THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER.-In this poem Canning ridicules the youthful Jacobin effusions of Southey, in which, he says, it was sedulously inculcated that there was a natural and eternal warfare between the poor and the rich. The Sapphic rhymes of Southey afforded a tempting subject for ludicrous parody, and Canning quotes the following stanza, lest he should be suspected of painting from fancy, and not from life:

Page 935.-SONG, BY ROGERO.-The Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement, was a caricature of the sentimental drama, and was levelled at Schiller's Robbers and Goethe's Stella. The following extract will throw some light on the song. The soliloquy is by Frere, the song by Canning and Ellis:

SCENE FROM "THE ROVERS."

(Scene changes to a subterranean vault in the Abbey of Quedlinburgh, with coffins, 'scutcheons, Death's heads, and cross-bones.-Toads and other loathsome reptiles are seen traversing the obscurer parts of the stage.-Rogero appears in chains, in a suit of rusty armor, with his beard grown and a cap of a grotesque form upon his head.-Beside him a crock or pitcher, supposed to contain his daily allowance of sustenance.—A long silence, during which the wind is heard to whistle through the caverns. Rogero rises and comes slowly forward, with his arms folded.)

Rog. Eleven years! It is now eleven years since I was first immured in this living sepulchre-the cruelty of a minister-the perfidy of a monkyes, Matilda! for thy sake-alive amidst the dead -chained-coffined-confined-cut off from the converse of my fellow-men. Soft! what have we here? (Stumbles over a bundle of sticks.) This cavern is so dark that I can scarcely distinguish the objects under my feet. Oh! the register of my captivity-let me see, how stands the account? (Takes up the sticks and turns them over with a melancholy air; then stands silent for a few moments, as if absorbed in calculation.) Eleven years and fifteen days!-Ha! the twenty-eighth of August! How does the recollection of it vibrate on my heart! It was on this day that I took my last leave of my Matilda. It was a summer evening; her melting hand seemed to dissolve in mine as I pressed it to my bosom-some demon whispered me that I should never see her I stood gazing on the hated vehicle which was conveying her away for ever. The tears were petrified under my eyelids. My heart was crystallized with agony. Anon, I looked along the road. The diligence seemed to diminish every instant. I felt my heart beat against its prison as if anxious to leap out and overtake it. My soul whirled round as I watched the rotation of the hinder wheels. A long trail of glory followed after her, and mingled with the dust; it

more.

was the emanation of divinity, luminous with love and beauty like the splendor of the setting sun, but it told me that the sun of my joys was sunk for ever. Yes, here in the depths of an eternal dungeon-in the nursing-cradle of hell-the suburbs of perdition-in a nest of demons, where despair in vain sits brooding over the putrid eggs of hope; where agony woos the embrace of death; where patience, beside the bottomless pool of despondency, sits angling for impossibilities-yet even here to behold her, to embrace her!-yes, Matilda, whether in this dark abode, amidst toads and spiders, or in a royal palace, amidst the more loathsome reptiles of a court, would be indifferent to me. Angels would shower down their hymns of gratulation upon our heads, while fiends would envy the eternity of suffering love. . . . Soft, what air was that? It seemed a sound of more than human warblings. Again (listens attentively for some minutes). Only the wind. It is well, however-it reminds me of that melancholy air which has so often solaced the hours of my captivity. Let me see whether the damps of this dungeon have not yet injured my guitar. (Takes his guitar, tunes it, and begins the song with a full accompaniment of violins from the orchestra.)—Morley's

Shorter Poems.

Page 936.-A TALE OF DRURY LANE.-The opening of Drury Lane Theatre in 1802, after

having been burnt and rebuilt, and the offering of a prize of fifty pounds by the manager for the best opening address, were the circumstances which suggested the production of the Rejected Addresses. The idea of the work was suddenly conceived, and it was executed in six weeks. Of the examples of the Rejected Addresses given in this book, "A Tale of Drury Lane" is a burlesque imitation of Sir Walter Scott's poems, "The Theatre" of Crabbe's, and "The Baby's Début" of Wordsworth's.

Page 948.-MALBROUCK.-" Malbrouck" does not date from the battle of Malplaquet (1709), but from the time of the Crusades, six hundred years before. According to a tradition discovered by M. de Chateaubriand, the air came from the Arabs, and the tale is a legend of Mambrou, a crusader. It was brought into fashion during the Revolution by Mme. Poitrine, who used to sing it to her royal foster-child, the son of Louis XVI. M. Arago tells us that when M. Monge, at Cairo, sang this air to an Egyptian audience, they all knew it, and joined in it. Certainly the song has nothing to do with the Duke of Marlborough, as it is all about feudal castles and Eastern wars. We are told also that the band of Captain Cook, in 1770, was playing the air one day on the east coast of Australia, when the natives evidently recognized it, and seemed enchanted.-Moniteur de l'Armée.-Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.